The question is: how much longer will people accept it?

So where are we now? Wealth inequality is at an all-time high, the cost of living has become unaffordable to the everyday american. Industries that should serve the public, like healthcare and insurance, are instead designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of human well-being.

This isn’t an accident. It’s a direct result of where we are, late-stage capitalism.

Where corporations and the ultra-rich manipulate the system to ensure that wealth continues to flow upward while the working class struggles to survive.

Wealth Inequality: The 1% Owns More Than the Bottom 90%

In the United States, the wealth gap has reached historical extremes:

• The top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 90% combined.
• The average CEO makes over 400 times more than the median worker.
• Billionaires saw their net worth increase by trillions during the COVID-19 pandemic, while working-class Americans faced layoffs, evictions, and medical bankruptcies.

The capitalist economic structure ensures that wealth concentrates at the top. Corporations aren’t just competing in the market, they’re buying politicians, dismantling labor protections, and monopolizing industries to eliminate any challenge to their dominance.

Big Pharma: Profit Over Human Lives

No industry exemplifies the failures of late-stage capitalism more than Big Pharma. Instead of focusing on affordable medicine and public health, pharmaceutical companies are beholden to shareholders and driven by profit incentives, leading to:

• Price gouging of life-saving drugs (e.g., insulin prices in the U.S. compared to other countries, which affects millions of americans).
• Patent manipulation to keep generic drugs off the market and inflate prices.
• Government lobbying to weaken regulations and prevent price caps.

While Americans are forced to ration medication or go into debt for basic healthcare, pharmaceutical executives and investors reap record profits.

Insurance & Healthcare: The Corporate Stranglehold on Well-Being

The U.S. doesn’t have a healthcare system, it has a for-profit industry. Unlike in other developed nations where healthcare is a human right, in the U.S., it’s a luxury for those who can afford it.

• Employer-based insurance keeps workers trapped in jobs they hate because losing employment means losing healthcare.
• Private insurance companies deny claims and charge exorbitant premiums, all while reporting record profits.
• Hospitals prioritize revenue over patient care, leading to medical bankruptcies, overpricing, and predatory billing practices.

This isn’t just inefficient, it’s by design. The same corporations that control healthcare spend billions lobbying against reforms that would make care more affordable or accessible.

The Consequences of Late-Stage Capitalism

The symptoms of this broken system are everywhere:

• The cracks in the system are impossible to ignore:
• Wages remain flat while productivity climbs ever higher.
• Gig workers face exploitation—stripped of stability, security, and benefits.
• Housing becomes a privilege, not a right, as investors hoard properties and inflate prices.
• Democracy falters under the weight of billionaire-backed influence and political manipulation.
• And in some cases, dissent is silenced—sometimes violently (cough Luigi Mangione).

The system isn’t broken, it’s working exactly as designed: for the rich to get richer and for the working class to be kept just comfortable enough to stay complacent.

So what happens next?

That’s for the 90% to decide.